A Good Year for the Outlaw

Cranking up some Boston on the way home from work today, and I’m about 15th in line on Route 78 behind a guy who decides 42 MPH is as fast as he can go on the now-perfectly-dry-and-free-of-snow-and-ice-roads. Just when I say to myself, “I hope I’ll never be THAT guy”, Boston starts to rip into “A Man I’ll Never Be”.

So it got me to thinking, and here is my list:

I’ll never be…

- The guy who drives with his high beams blaring at you from across the interstate and makes no effort to show a little decency.

- The guy who invades your personal space in line at the grocery store, as if standing 3 inches from your left ear and pushing your little rubber “divider bar” right up to your loaf of bread, and then starting his own pile within millimeters of said bread is going to get him through the line any faster.

- The guy who calls the sports talk station, and despite the fact he’s a 5-foot-4, 325 pound, beer swilling, brat devouring, heavy-weezing turd of a non-athlete, refers to the Bears/Bulls/White Sox/whomever he roots for as “we”. As in, “I think WE got away from the running game too quick and WE need to get some new receivers and WE got outcoached.” Oh, YOU did? Thanks, WannabeDitka.

- The guy sitting behind the backstop during a game involving 9-12 year old little boys learning how to play baseball and berates the umpire, cussing, screaming, and making a total ass of himself, while his embarrassed son refuses to come in from deep center field and admit that the biggest jerk in the stands is his dad.

Those are the guys I’ll never be…by choice.

There are a lot of guys, on the other hand, I will never be but wish I could. One of the guys on that list would be Brad Delp, the late lead singer of Boston. 30+ years after I first heard that band, and I still love that 1st album, and each time I hear it it’s like the first time.